• by Colin Kirkland , December 24, 2025

The Italian Competition Authority on Wednesday issued a press release ordering Meta to suspend the terms excluding competing AI chatbots from being created and used with WhatsApp’s Business offering.

During an expanded investigation that initially began in July, the Italian watchdog says it discovered that Meta’s WhatsApp Business Solution Terms, set to become effective in January 2026, “completely exclude Meta AI’s competitors from the WhatsApp platform in the AI Chatbot services market.”

The watchdog has since found that Meta’s terms regarding AI competition on its direct-messaging platform “constitute an abuse” to a national law, in that it “may limit production, market access or technical developments in the AI Chatbot services market, to the detriment of consumers.”

As a result of the watchdog’s decision, Meta has been ordered to “immediately suspend the WhatsApp Business Solution Terms” as the Italian Authority coordinates with the European Commission, which also launched an investigation into Meta’s new terms this month. 

Notably, while Meta’s current terms will block leading chatbot competitors such as Perplexity and OpenAI from operating on WhatsApp, businesses using AI-powered customer service bots on the platform will not be affected. 

Meta -- which controls nearly 20% of global digital ad spend, with over 95% of its $160 billion yearly revenue intake coming from advertising -- announced its block against competing AI chatbots on WhatsApp earlier this month. 

By blocking access to leading chatbots, Meta is effectively forcing advertisers to use its own AI chatbot within WhatsApp for general-purpose conversational engagement, which the company can then use to train its ad-targeting systems.